Believe it or not, they would be right in doing so, because it is Republican operatives who are funding the whole thing.
Via the NYT:
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a range of ideas, including national advertisements, to cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists, people involved in the discussion said.
White House and Congressional Democratic strategists are trying to energize dispirited Democratic voters over the coming six weeks, in hopes of limiting the party’s losses and keeping control of the House and Senate. The strategists see openings to exploit after a string of Tea Party successes split Republicans in a number of states, culminating last week with developments that scrambled Senate races in Delaware and Alaska.
“We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” said one Democratic strategist who has spoken with White House advisers but requested anonymity to discuss private strategy talks.
Democrats are divided. The party’s House and Senate campaign committees are resistant, not wanting to do anything that smacks of nationalizing the midterm elections when high unemployment and the drop in Mr. Obama’s popularity have made the climate so hostile to Democrats. Endangered Congressional candidates want any available money to go to their localized campaigns.
Late Sunday night, White House advisers denied that a national ad campaign was being planned. “There’s been no discussion of such a thing at the White House” or the Democratic National Committee, said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser.
The White House claims that this story is wrong and that New York Times totally blew it. However, of course, they have to say this, because if it ever were officially on the record that the White House was targeting a political movement, it would be political suicide for them.
One thing I will say is this; if the White House was thinking along these lines, that the Tea Party movement was, in fact, being sponsored and supported by operatives within the GOP — they would be absolutely correct in that assumption. When this Tea Party phenomenon began, I found it to be quite inspiring to see real Americans standing up for the core beliefs that were ingrained into them. I thought it to be a real genuine movement. However, as time went on, I began to see some familiar names involved with it —- Fox News, Dick Army, and more.
When I began to see this, the eternal skeptic in me, began questioning, “Why are these people involved?” This is when I decided that this Tea Party movement was nothing more than a Neo-Conservative movement. Which was being backed by the same people that cheered on, as Bush led us into the war in Iraq —- which we all now know was a tragic mistake.
Now only that, but I have noticed that the Neo-Conservatives will accept and support those who stay on message — when it comes to defense. However, if a candidate comes up, who does not toe the Neo-Conservative line of defense and about war, they find themselves without support and usually being criticized by the Neo-Conservative establishment in Washington D.C. Worse yet, some of them get accused of being Democratic Party plants.
So, as I said in the beginning of this posting. While the White House would be committing political suicide, if they officially went on record as wanting to do this; they would be right on point in their line of thinking.
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